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P35-DS4 Modded Bios Results

I will post overclocked stress testing, benchmarks and stability results with the modded bios by mid December.

One forum member has already posted that the P35DS4_mod_15b modded bios created by virtualfred worked fine, but he didn't post any details about his testing with the new bios. See GIGABYTE Modified Bios, post #2529 for more information. This bios should work fine with P35-DS4rev: 2.0 and rev: 2.1 motherboards. I did a binary comparison of the standard Gigabyte F14 bios files for both revisions and they are identical.

Re: P35-DS4 Modded Bios Results

Interesting, the Intel 12.7.0.1936 RAID OROM being used in an ICH9R SATA chipset mother board. Same OROM I use in my Z87 board. The question becomes what version of IRST will be used.

Well let's see, going by the specs (Intel's) the latest version of the IRST AHCI/RAID driver compatible with the ICH9R is 11.7.0.1013.

The IRST version 12 drivers leave behind all the non-PCH type chipsets, the so called north and south bridge chipsets like those used up to and including the X58/ICH10R pair, and the P35/ICH9R as well. Intel also throws a spec in for the CPU used in the system, restricted to this:

The inclusion of the Celeron line makes no sense, as they are older than the Core 2 Duo and Quad processors (but can be socket 775) and the Core 2 Duo and Quad processors are excluded. Why Intel lists the processors when the chipset alone implicitly excludes them makes no sense IMO.

I doubt IRST version 12 will install on any ICH-type chipset, if only because the installation program does not allow it. Manual driver installation through Device Manager, with the "F6" drivers? Or does this OROM modded BIOS have the chipset identifier hack, similar to that used to enable RAID 0 TRIM on pre-7 series chipsets?

Both IRST versions 11 and 12 work with Windows 7 and beyond, and Server 2008 only.

A new OROM beyond the Intel Matrix Storage OROM is no doubt a good thing, I just hope the 12.7 OROM is not to new for these boards, when used with RAID volumes. There is no chance the ICH9R supports any of the new features that the version 12 OROM and IRST driver provide, but those features never existed on those boards, so who cares, right?

I would think that the favorite IRST version 11.2 driver and a version 11 OROM would be the best choice for an ICH9R, so what am I missing?

Re: P35-DS4 Modded Bios Results

^^+1^^

My plan is to use windows Sysprep to legally copy/move/migrate my current P35-DS3L o/s boot drive to the Samsung 840 Pro boot ssd in the P35-DS4. I'll need to activate this new win7 installation and the "copied" o/s should be fine. I expect some issues with some of my current non-windows programs that only have a single license for one system.

Once everything is set up on the P35-DS4, I will switch from my current AHCI mode to Raid mode for the Intel sata2 ports. I don't plan on creating any permanent Raid arrays with my new settings, but I'm tempted to test with both of my WD Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB hard drives in a Raid 0 high performance setup. My windows registry already has MSAHCI, IastorV, and IDE Intel sata2 modes enabled.
I've never used a raid setup before and this should prove to be a challenging learning experience.

Re: P35-DS4 Modded Bios Results

I hope I am not seeming to be the Grinch here, or predicting failure and doom (the end is near...), for all I know this BIOS has been tested and being used with new versions of IRST just fine. Plus all good BIOS modder's know the "specs" don't always mean much... at least to themselves, and the end results speak for themselves as well.

FWIW, I've used the Samsung cloning software to copy an OS installation to a Samsung SSD, without any need to activate Windows again. That is with the Samsung SSD being used on the same board as the OS source used for the clone. Once complete, I had two "legal", identical copies of Windows on two drives on that system (on the same system being the key), and I could boot either one, without any nagging from Windows to activate the new copy. I had the same experience with the Intel SSD cloning software.

IMO, you'll find creating your RAID array to be surprising simple. You can use either the Intel OROM, the "Ctrl i" interface started during POST, or the IRST GUI in Windows, assuming you have the full IRST driver/GUI package installed. Do not dismiss the IRST Windows program, it works perfectly and is nothing like a Windows BIOS update program. I've used the IRST Windows program more than the OROM interface, but have never had any problems with either.

You don't need to prepare the drives you plan to use for your RAID array, except saving any data from them you need, which will be lost once the RAID array is created. The IRST Windows GUI does offer an option to save the data from the drives you'll use for the RAID array, but I've never used it so don't know how it works.

Re: P35-DS4 Modded Bios Results

To continue in my Grinchly ways, this is a quote from the horse's mouth (or in this case, a bull... Fernando), in his BIOS Modding Intro:

1. AHCI and RAID systems generally will work at its best, when the in-use RAID ROM module (="firmware" of the AHCI/RAID Controller) and the in-use AHCI/RAID drivers belong to the same generation (for Intel: MSM/RST/RSTe) and - if possible - to the same version series (e.g. Intel MSM v8.9 or Intel RST v10.1).

2. Unfortunately there are some technical limitations, because the actual PCI ROM modules are not fully backwards compatible. Only the owners of a brandnew mainboard or pc can be sure, that the newest PCI ROM version definitively will work. As a consequence users with an older hardware configuration have to find out themselves (or by a Google search) the last PCI ROM version, which is suitable for their mainboard/system.

3. Users, who have flashed a BIOS with an uncompatible Intel RAID ROM version, probably will not be able to run and/or to use the Intel RAID ROM Utility (by hitting CTRL+I), but usually this problem can be solved by reflashing the original BIOS.

But this is likely just some warning caveats, since it is impossible to predict the results of the OROM/driver/BIOS combination on every board that exists.

(I'm just trying to scare Prof Jim out of using the modded BIOS, since I'm worried his SSDs will be faster than mine... )